Mother’s Day 2014, Benghazi is back on the congressional front-burner; Obamacare, the IRS and Fast & Furious simmer on the back of the Washington scandal stove; and in North County, two qualified roses for all the moms — and a self-inflicted raspberry.

A thorny rose — the Signature Achievement award — to Stuck in the Rough, the presciently named company that pulled off a great trouble shot by collecting some 11,000 Escondido signatures in support of an initiative that would allow Michael Schlesinger, Stuck in the Rough’s Beverly Hills owner, to build up to 430 houses on the former Escondido Country Club’s withered golf course.

You’ll recall that another swarm of signatureas in support of a resident-led anti-development initiative encouraged the Escondido City Council to vote to preserve the golf course as permanent open space, an action that Schlesinger believes is an illegal taking of his property’s value.

Simply from the standpoint of political tradecraft, the naming of the new measure — “Escondido Open Space and Community Revitalization Initiative” — is brilliant, a masterful stroke of truth hedging. (His project would include some open space, trails and amenities like a community center.) Evidently, paid signature gatherers had an easy time of persuading Escondido voters to sign on the line for open-space motherhood and revitalized Julian pie.

No matter how you slice it, this game of chicken stinks as much as the raw manure Stuck in the Rough inexplicably dumped on the golf course’s fairways, a move many viewed as retaliation against the defiant residents.

In an ideal world, which this one certainly isn’t, an exit strategy would be in the offing. Schlesinger’s political and legal challenges to the city’s open-space decree would be rendered moot by a sale of Schlesinger’s property.

But to whom? And for what? And for how much?

Those are the questions that, for the moment, are stuck in the rough.

A rose bud — the Preliminary Prognosis award — to Tri-City Medical Center for hiring a new CEO with a broad range of hospital executive experience who might be the right fit to take the hospital to the next level of excellence.

By all appearances, Tim Moran brings a breadth of experience to the many challenges facing Tri-City. Just for starters, Moran, who will start in June, will be facing the following to-do list:

• Build a new earthquake-safe hospital. In the next decade, the old hospital will have to be torn down in phases and a new one erected. I understand from one board member that low-interest HUD loans, not bonds, will be the way to go. Moran is going to have to kick-start the financing and the planning.

• Improve the collaborative culture of the hospital in the turbulent wake of former CEO Larry Anderson’s firing. Moran has a reputation for hands-on problem solving. For example, he once spent the night in a hospital bed not because he was sick but to learn for himself if excessive noise was a problem.

• Negotiate an affiliation with a large health care system that cuts costs while improving service to Tri-City patients in a marketplace that militates against stand-alone hospitals. Going solo is a prescription for heart failure. The potential partners are out there — Scripps, Sharp, UCSD — but it’s going to take a steady, experienced hand to find the right fit for a public health district supported by taxpayers.

Moran appears to be a genial listener who’s had to make decisions to save troubled hospitals. He’s worked for nonprofits as well as for-profit organizations. To be sure, he’s moved around a lot. A Mr. Fix-It, one board member called him. Hard to say how long he’ll be here, but one thing is certain: He won’t be bored. Plenty on the plate.

An expert pistol shot, I gather, Moran is going to need a dead eye to improve Tri-City’s prognosis from threatened to robust.

A raspberry — the Errant Key Stroke award — to the writer of this column for misspelling the given name of Sylvia Clark’s late husband, Lyle Clark, in a May 6 column about a city of Escondido lawsuit over massive water underbilling at the Clark ranch. My apologies.